Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday February 10, 2016 @08:43AM
from the just-wish-it-was-easy-to-block-the-clickbait dept.

Press2ToContinue writes: Forging a bold step in the right direction, Stack Overflow announced today that they don't care if you use an ad blocker when you visit their site. "The truth is: we don't care if our users use ad blockers on Stack Overflow. More accurately: we hope that they won't, but we understand that some people just don't like ads. Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance. ... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces. Think scantily-clad women selling flight deals, weight-loss supplement promos or wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube-men promoting car dealerships."
It's possible that this declaration by SO might help to clarify to advertisers that it is the overabundance of low quality ads that practically force the public to seek out ad blockers. But seriously, what is the likelihood of that?

Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance.

This is a really good point that I haven't seen other sites make. They're right about it, especially the "campaign performance". If 20% of the user base is not going to click on an ad anyway, then why bother padding the numbers to say you served ads to that additional group? Just don't serve them ads, and then your click-through rate improves because you've cut out a chunk of people who aren't going to click on them anyway. That might make the numbers for the overall ad campaign better, which may increase the rates that they can then charge for ads in the future, because they have a higher clickthrough rate.

Why? Because it encourages the ad industry to change for the benefit of all of us, including those who don't use an ad blocker? I fell that's a damn good reason to keep using it, myself, and just turn off the whitelist if you don't like it. Yes, you can do that, it's one checkbox in the config.

And fails to do so.Even without this feature, for example the easylist privacy contains unreasonable exceptions for fucking GOOGLE ANALYTICS on some sites. I guess they payed to be able to track their visitors while others cannot (because its a damn privacy list).

It's ads that start playing a video at fucking maximum volume while you are trying to work.

But most importantly, its ads that are made entirely out of javascript running on MY computer by another entity who has not been vetted or trusted by me. You do not need to run a program on my computer to sell me something.

It's the ads that are for all intents and purposes, malware. Adblocking+

Who do I really represent, then? I'll answer for you, since you're too full of shit to answer for yourself: I represent myself as an end-user. Period. My real name and identity are attached to this account for public view, you can see who I am and what my affiliations are, so I suggest you take a look for yourself and stop talking out of your ass; everyone else can see the truth, as well, so your bullshit just becomes stinkingly obvious to the world when you try to shovel it toward me.

Because I moderate, I browse at -1 in order to look for abuses, so I ca counter them. This is even Slashdot's suggested way to browse when modersting. To add to it, I see the value in AC posts, just not in APK's ads.

Care to quote where I ever claimed to have attacked APK in any way? My posting history is visible the the entire world, should be easy, right?

The real question is why I keep referring to you in the 3rd person as though I don't know I'm replying to you, APK. You toxic bastard.

When and where do I ever admit to starting with APK? Show me. Link to the post, it's gotta be that simple if it ever actually happened.

As for how obvious it is that I'm in bed with advertisers, provide sources for this? Keith Bronstrup. Look me up. Find the association between me and advertisers, go ahead. Post all the details, go for it, it should be easy since it's so obvious.

Sorry, APK, I'm not going to throw out useful contributors just because you insist on advertising your "ad blocker".

Further, your first example of an attack was a joke, not an attack. If you took that personally, APK, that's on you; you clearly went looking for it, as I didn't seek you out to say it. Unlike you, who often seeks me out to reply to me directly, in an attempt to start shit. Your second example was simply you responding to me asking what words I put in your mouth b

What fake name? And if the name I gave is fake, what is my real name? You can find my birth certificate held with the City of Cleveland - Division of Vital Statistics. As for how badly I "fried" myself, well, I'm glad you linked back to your own post rather than posting it again, as I address those claims in response to that post.

I didn't start crap, APK, you came looking for crap. The truth I am pointing out is backed by my posting history, there for all to see. Your bullshit, however, is masked by your

Here's the thing: In your first link, APK... err... you didn't show up until I had posted, he... err... you most certainly were not "there first" as you claim. And you still have not shown me where I put words in your mouth. I did not get what I asked for, because you can not give it to me, because it does not exist. You go away no. Shoo. You've not only beaten yourself, but driven your failure into the ground. As for moderation, I have never moderated one of your posts, APK. Not once. By the time I see the

No, BronsCon is not the name on my birth certificate, the Bronstrup (as visible in the email address just to the right of my username) is the last name on that piece of paper. As for you, APK? Hiding behind anonymity while calling me out for using a false name? BronsCon identifies me in many places on the internet, and I've given you (and the rest of the world) my full name in this very conversation and at least once in the past. As for the rest of your post, Alexander, I replied to it the first time you po

There's always the AC I replied to, as well. Unless that was you attacking yourself, Alexander. But you're right in this case, you had posted in the thread before me; my mistake for not fully expanding the thread to see this. There is huge difference between lying and being mistaken and I was certainly the latter in this case and you certainly didn't bust my for anything. I still wasn't replying to, or attacking, you; I was making a joke. That you took it personally speaks volumes about you.

As I said in my reply to your other AC post, Alexander (and you can call me Keith, by the way, I feel we should be on a first name basis at this point and I've given you that information at least twice now), I was mistaken, I did not expand the thread fully to see that you had posted there. I was also not replying to you.

And you still have yet to prove that I have any ties to advertising. You won't, because you can't, because I don't. But go ahead and prove my "lie", Alexander.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. BronsCon is a shortening of Bronstrup Consulting, the name of the business I operated when I created this accoung, Bronstrup being my real last name, Keith (and I've given you this at least 4 times now, Alexander) being my real first name. And, again, there is a huge difference between lying and being mistaken. Where are the ads on my site [bronstrup.com]? Nowhere, there are none, I'm not making money on ads, and I'm not selling them either. And I'm clearly not

Third copy of this same shitpost. Speaking something you believe to be truth it not a lie; notice how, once corrected, I stopped making that claim? Yeah, because I wasn't lying, I was mistaken. If I claim that again in the future, go ahead and call it a lie, because then it will be. Meanwhile, your claims that I have ties to the advertising industry are flat out lies, Alexander, as is any claim you make, while posting anonymously, that you are not, in fact, Alexander P. Kowalski, and any claim you make that

I wonder... do you waste so much of your time on me because you haven't yet figured out how to beat me? Here's a helpful hint: we need not be enemies and you need not beat me. Just stop. You've been entertaining and, because of that, I'm willing to forgive and forget. So just... stop. You won't win, because there is nothing to win; you'll never prove what you're trying to prove because there is nothing to prove. Yes, my wife's blo

Wow, I had all that time to proofread that post and I didn't. That's a fail in my part and I'll own it (because that's what I do when I fail; notice how I haven't owned any of the "failures" you keep trying to point out, Alexander). The last paragraph should read:

Honestly, I've been telling her to just lose the ads, as they cost more (in terms of the time I spend helping her with them) than they bring in, by several orders of magnitude. But you're clearly right, I'm profiting from those ads. Pity me, look

Haha, you speak just like one of the advertisers you claim to despise. Doubletalk. Seriously? You have proven nothing, you can't prove anything, because there is nothing to prove and I'm not convinced you even know what a fact is, Alexander. Just. Give. Up.

You talk about integrity, Alexander, but then you masquerade behind the Anonymous Coward moniker and pretend to be other people, using a network of "bridges" (not that you know what those even are or you'd know, simply, that the term you are looking for is "proxy") to evade an ever-growing collection of IP bans in order to post your messages. Yeah, that's integrity, and just the kind of ethics I like to see displayed by the people whose software I allow to run on my system. Yup.

I think the whole advertising situation will get better once the tech bubble bursts. Just look at many of the tech companies now - they are giant advertising platforms, but spend most of their revenues and investor money on user acquisition through advertising. This is like a giant ponzi scheme really.

Google worked, and will probably keep working for some time now, because one of the main use cases for search is to find stuff you want to buy. When you go to the site and start searching for a particular product, it isn't a big deal (and sometimes is useful) when ads come up for that product or equivalents you might not have heard off. The advertising has actual value in informing you about what is available. Other sites, such as Facebook, might have more information on me, but I go there to look at pictures of my friend's dogs and kids, not when I want to find something to buy. For that reason I find their ads incredibly annoying, and despite Zuckerberg going on about how they make them relevant, he would only be true if I was some kind of consumption machine that wonders around the internet like a virtual godzilla eating up every product that is shoved in my face.

My prediction is that eventually the industry will fall apart as companies realise the ponzi nature of current advertising prices, and that much of this expenditure is not converting in to sales. In that regard, the better tracking/conversion tools that the internet allows may be the industries own downfall.

I think the whole advertising situation will get better once the tech bubble bursts.

You seem curiously convinced that A) we are in a bubble and B) that advertising will go away or "get better". You can't really know A for certain by definition because bubbles generally can only be identified in retrospect and B will never ever happen. It's unclear what "get better" means to you but I'm pretty sure whatever it is won't happen.

My prediction is that eventually the industry will fall apart as companies realise the ponzi nature of current advertising prices, and that much of this expenditure is not converting in to sales.

I think you don't understand the advertising business. You think that companies are naively throwing money at advertising because they don't know any better. While there are some out there where that is true for the most part buyers of advertising understand very well the relationship between advertising dollars spent and the returns they get. It's not at all hard to get a pretty solid idea of the correlation between ad spend and revenue.

It seems like advertising is backing away a bit, with the notable exception of the web. Ad-supported cable is dying but the no-ads premiums channels like HBO are doing well, and zero-ad subscription services like Netflix are cleaning up. The tech industry does seem to have more than it's share of advertising companies masquerading as something else. And the number of multi-billion dollar acquisitions for things like chat platforms, many that have subsequently been sold at a fraction of their purchase pri

It seems like advertising is backing away a bit, with the notable exception of the web. Ad-supported cable is dying but the no-ads premiums channels like HBO are doing well, and zero-ad subscription services like Netflix are cleaning up. The tech industry does seem to have more than it's share of advertising companies masquerading as something else. And the number of multi-billion dollar acquisitions for things like chat platforms, many that have subsequently been sold at a fraction of their purchase price,

When a significant number of people cut their (ad supported) cable and subscribe to Netflix (no ads), then ad supported programming is decreased. All the stuff about the channels pandering to their audience may be true, but it's irrelevant. Note that, despite the existence of Hulu (apparently, I'm in Canada) Netflix continues to expand. There is a growing market for ad-free television.

The super bowl is a special event that happens for a few hours every year. Yes, ads for the super bowl cost a lot. But t

I think part of the reason is due to Google having a near monopoly in terms of search and online advertising. There's no competition to drive prices down, but even still the costs are lower for many companies than advertising with traditional media which is why so many companies will gladly line up to let Google make a substantial profit.

You'll also find plenty of blogs posting PR content verbatim. I get requests from PR companies all the time for my blog. They want me to promote their product using their words and I'll get "paid" in high resolution images of their product or to be entered for a chance to win one of the products. I ignore/delete these requests (after all, my credit card company doesn't let me pay off my bill using high resolution images) but too many people jump on board and do whatever the company says. They mistake co

they are giant advertising platforms, but spend most of their revenues and investor money on user acquisition through advertising. This is like a giant ponzi scheme really.

That's actually a really good analogy.

Twitter is a great example of this -- they went IPO at $28 billion freaking dollars.

They had no business model, assets, or revenue to support that valuation. It was all hype and "ZOMG, the Twitterz". Now, fast forward, it it loses... what, $150 million per year? How do you do that on almost $600 million in revenues?

Tech companies have pretty much been starting out as grossly overvalued, by the end of the day when the big investors have laundered their profits, and the little guy is left holding the bag... the stock is never worth the same again, at least not in the long run.

The value of tech stocks relative to actual value has rarely held up. Essentially they're all over sold as ad platforms, which in the long run never actually justify the original stupid prices they fetched.

Over the last 20 years (at least), tech companies have been a series of giant ponzi schemes of grossly overvalued companies which ultimately can't deliver on the bullshit hype.

Honestly, I don't understand how the financial industry works if it's all wishful thinking, bad math, and funny money. Oh, wait, they make their money up front, and then pass the shit on to the next suckers in the scheme, of course.

It just transfers money into the hands of big investors who buy in first, and leave everyone else wondering how they got fleeced. Exactly like a ponzi scheme.

Many studies have shown that much of the financial system is essentially random. It's just that everyone else is making random decisions too, so the pigeons all do their dances. There was one study that actually had monkeys pick stocks. They did as well as professional traders.

Then there are the actual criminals, of course. Such as those who manage IPOs.

Many studies have shown that much of the financial system is essentially random

Once set in motion, the financial system is essentially random. I will believe that.

But, increasingly the entire premises are just a pure con job -- from valuations of stocks at IPO being magical thinking, to the expectation companies will grow 10% year over year forever, increasingly the entire financial industry sits on a foundation of complete lies and bullshit.

The value of a company is no longer tied to its assets or revenues, but the hope that unicorn poop will create billions of dollars out of thin air, despite there being no rational reason to think that.

You gave a bad example. Twitter is a service that is still trying to establish a real revenue stream.

Twitter is a great example of what I was giving an example of.

Twitter is, essentially, an advertising company.. that's the revenue model. It just piggy-backs on inane garbage like when the Kardashians shit.

Twitter went IPO for $28 billion dollars, in the 10 years since Twitter has been operating, they've lost $2 billion dollars.

You'll note that the poster I replied to, and quoted, said tech companies are basically ad companies, and essentially ponzi schemes. Here it is again:

they are giant advertising platforms, but spend most of their revenues and investor money on user acquisition through advertising. This is like a giant ponzi scheme really.

So, in terms of an example of a company which is essentially an ad platform, which has failed to make any money, and which was overvalued from the start and is losing money... exactly like a ponzi scheme... I didn't give a "bad" example.

I gave an example of exactly what I was trying to give an example of, and in agreement with the poster I was responding to.

Twitter is a bullshit vehicle which collected $28 billion of other people's money at IPO, has lost $2 billion dollars flailing about trying to have a business model, and whose stock keeps losing value.

Amazon's margins are so small because they invest the bulk of their profits back into the business in order to grow it. If, at some point, they were to decide: "Okay, we're as big as we want to be. Let's stop growing.", they'd be much more "profitable".

And really, what IS the better alternative to using the profit to expand? You could throw it all away in the form of dividends. That would make assholes like Carl Icahn happy. But what good would it do for Amazon? Or you could sit on a cash stockpile of

I'm not sure you understand the simple concept of ROI. You mentioned better tracking and conversion tools and any marketing team worth their salt is using these on a daily bases. Our team can track the effects of micro changes in ad campaigns on our visitor traffic and conversion rates. As we can quantify the value of a customer, its quite easy to do the math: X more dollars in advertising results in Y more customers. Simply stated, is X less than Y times customer value.

Step back and look at the wider picture though. What sets the price of X? Why is it, say, $1 to get 1 more customer and not 1c? If all the advertisers were companies that built fridges, then the value of X would settle at a price at or below the profit on every fridge they sell. If they go any higher they will be paying people to buy fridges which is not sustainable. However, if the advertisers are companies that are trying to acquire users so that they can make money from advertising, then each time they s

For that reason I find their ads incredibly annoying, and despite Zuckerberg going on about how they make them relevant, he would only be true if I was some kind of consumption machine that wonders around the internet like a virtual godzilla eating up every product that is shoved in my face.

I think this is the core problem; this is exactly what advertisers want their clients to believe - if they see it they will buy! EYEBALLS! MOAR EYEBALLS!

Uh, no...it doesn't work like that, it never worked like that. Yet the advertisers blindly press on with more and more aggressive attempts to force people to see things they do not want, and use eyeballs as a metric of their "success". Advertisers don't have to prove that their advertising actually works to increase sales - they generally just have to spin

There are different kinds of advertising:On the internet you often have "Buy OUR crap. Now." ads which hope people click on them and buy stuff. But for the reasons you stated, most ads outside of search engines won't lead to direct sales that way because people rarely come to websites like Facebook looking to buy stuff *right now*.

Another kind of ad are more about brand recognition, about getting your name out. So that people who aren't looking to buy something *right now* will either remember your name or

There is certainly a place for marketing in the world. The web in particular seems to have gone over the top abusive though. And the maxim "it's easier to sell a good product" seems to have suffocated beneath the gelatinous buttocks of "I can sell anything."

If you're complaining about me not watching ads on your site, how about showing me ads FROM your site, not a third party's; and static images and text, no video, no animation, no scripts, no multipage GIFs. Certainly never popups/unders/etc. I do NOT object to static images and text, for which I'm already paying the bandwidth to download.

If you're complaining about me not watching ads on your site, how about showing me ads FROM your site, not a third party's

The infrastructure required for a high-traffic web site of media company with a number of high-traffic sites is not insignificant, and like mail servers it's often a better idea to farm it out so as to be able to focus on content.

It works just fine. I have a friend who streams. He has sponsors who pay him to endorse their product to his small audience. The sponsor watches his viewer numbers and those come into play when they renegotiate. I know of several niche websites that do similar things: instead of just slapping up a Google ad they make deals with relevant sponsors and show their ads.

Web ad services are so successful because a) they're the lazy solution for both advertisers and hosts and b) they give the marketers low effort

How about the ones that start windows popping up all over the place? Or start playing at obnoxiously loud levels? Or the four videos that start sucking down cpu.

And it doesn't help that I tend to pop open a few articles to read (or questions on StackExchange (disclaimer: I'm one of the moderators on Open Data [stackexchange.com])), and if a video starts playing, I'd have to look through all of my tabs and figure out which one it was to shut it down.

And that's not the disturbing ones that seem to be tracking other sites I've

...Our belief is that if someone doesn't like them, and they won't click on them, any impressions served to them will only annoy them-- plus, serving ads to people who won't click on them harms campaign performance.... Publishers can't win by forcing ads — especially low-quality ads — in people's faces....

FTA on SD : "it is the overabundance of low quality ads that practically force the public to seek out ad blockers"

IMO it is missing the point : intrusiveness is the problem. Overabundance is just one type of intrusiveness. Intrusive means : consuming the resources I own ( cpu, mem, disc) or that I pay for (bandwidth). Putting my very own resources at risk with the malvertising. Rendering my interface slow. But mostly : too big, too visible, too noisy, flashy. AFAIK it's one of the points fought by AdBlockPlus : Ad is not the problem, intrusive ad is. It is enough to have one single intrusive ad - the contrary of abundance - to make me install all I can (ADB+, etc file, FlashBlock, etc).
Z.

I've been happily using Stack Overflow for a couple of years now. I've learned a lot, despite many participants often being at the school/junior professional level, thus only regurgitating the stuff from tutorials without necessarily much depth of insight or practical use experience. I've also been able to contribute some things, which seem to be helpful to a number of people.

I never realized there were ads on the site until this article. But then again, I've had AdBlock / hosts file since before I signed

It's not ads per se that are annoying, it's how they affect the browsing experience. Reading Slashdot a few seconds ago - I read one or two sentences of an article, then an image loaded and reformatted the page and the paragraph I was reading disappeared. Found it again, read half a sentence and another image loaded and it disappeared again. I don't have time to chase my article all over the screen.
On other sites, I'll read half a paragraph, then it will suddenly wipe everything out (not just scroll it off the screen) while it tries to load some huge object from the network. Or half the page will come down, then stop while it hangs trying to do a DNS lookup or load a giant Flash video from some ad network that's not responding, but none of the remaining text will load while it hangs.
This happens so much that I've either stopped reading some sites, or installed ad blockers on computers that I use often. I don't hate the ads - I maybe click on one or two a year - if that's enough to keep things profitable I have no objection. What's unacceptable is the way they negatively impact what I'm actually trying to do.

It's possible that this declaration by SO might help to clarify to advertisers that it is the overabundance of low quality ads that practically force the public to seek out ad blockers. But seriously, what is the likelihood of that?

I'm not sure. The number is a negative value somewhere between googolplex hypercubed and infinity...

Now imagine that stupid ad playing multiple times on top of the TV show you're trying to watch, including the audio. That's what the Web feels like with most ads.

Please note that I really don't mind the text-only or static image ads. But I despise the animated, dynamic, auto-playing video ads. Those things waste my bandwidth and my CPU cycles. It's also wasting the battery power of people using mobile devices.

If I see an ad for something, it had served its purpose. If a buy a Honda partly because of an ad I saw two weeks ago, but didn't click on, it still worked. Maybe the idea of measuring clicks is that clicks and ad effectiveness are well correlated... but I'm too lazy to find any studies.

I think the method is a very strongly motivated post-purchase questionnaire type of thing. Basically, they pay something like a $25 gift card, wherein at least one of the questions helps link the purchase to the ad that motivated it. I think they must get enough responses from such measures to justify it.

The company I work for "has ways" to determine ROI; If you buy a car based on an ad you saw a couple weeks ago, they are fairly good about linking those two events in some fashion or another. People smarter than me are working on it. I just work on some of the mundane configuration side of things. It's a bit frightening how good it is.

But are you sure those "ways" are actually effective? I've talked to quite a few laymen recently, including last week a successful marketing professional, who were convinced that read-receipts [wikipedia.org] were an effective way to judge when and how many people read the emails they send. The marketing person was even quoting me general statistics based on this.

But of course not all email clients honor, or even support read receipts. I'm not even sure most of them do. Some folks try to get around this by embedding externally-hosted images, but any good email client shouldn't automatically present those either. So while a "read-receipt" can (probably) be used to tell that some person has at least glanced at your email, they don't really tell you anything about who hasn't.

What I'm at getting here is that marketing people have a nasty tendency to have completely unwarranted blind faith in their tools, when they don't really understand how those tools work and what their actual limitations are. So I really would take any info from them about tech with a grain of salt, no matter how certain they are about it. In fact, the more certain they are, the more suspicious you should be.

I hope everyone uses ad blockers and squeezes ads out of existence entirely. Businesses will have to find new ways to promote themselves. For example, I like reading product reviews or getting referrals from friends. Referrals alone can scale huge for a business given the way we are all connected through facebook, google+, twitter, whatever.

As annoying as APK's post are, he is still right, a hosts file really does work. It even blocked a some of the video ads that were inserted into a stream. For almost zer

I wouldn't be too sad if Facebook or twitter went away. Facebook is basically blogging and blog syndication plus chat / calendar and such. Ad-supported and super invasive. Being popular because it's popular ("everyone else is using it"). It's a one-provider system. Without facebook (you could hope) we would perhaps get a multi-provider system for social networking, event invitations and such - where you can choose different client software and providers (or perhaps operate your own server) with UI, feature

Stack Overflow's main value is in user-generated content. The users are the ones who write questions and answers, and rate them to filter out garbage. It's no surprise that they would rather have 20% of users block ads, than to lose that 20%. When someone comes to Stack Overflow with ads blocked, the site will still potentially gain something from that user, in the form of a question/answer/rating. Wired, on the other hand, has very little user-generated content, as far as I know. So if someone browses Wire

At least it's not Expert Sex Change links where people have a similar problem and people post answers, but you can't see them because you don't pay for their service. Those days were the worst.

[Actually, today what sucks is all of the foreign sites that are scraping forums and Stack Overflow and just reposting the exact same content. You think "oh, another place that might have a different answer than the one on SO that wasn't quite what I wanted" when in reality, it's just some hack taking revenue away f

It used to be that ExpertsExchange would show the answers but hide them under a "pop-in" window that wouldn't go away unless you paid... Or unless you used developer tools to remove the elements causing the popup. Then you could read the content for free. Sadly, they've caught on to this and now don't even serve up the answer on the page. (Which, to be honest, is the proper way of doing things. Not that I agree with their business model, but if you're going to do that you don't put the content on the pa

In the "times long ago", the answers were only available for paid access (or changing your User Agent string).....but Google started ranking them lower for serving up different content to the spiders than to the real people, so they moved the answers all the way to the bottom and just obscuring them. So it isn't as bad now as it used to be.

I rarely to never find useful answers on StackOverflow, further many unrelated issues appear and often end up ranking higher on search engines than the actual documentation or bug report for the project. I wouldn't have an issue with the site if it didn't completely pollute search results, its 'network' is a forum and should be treated as such (being present only once in a search engine results page).

It's also a pretty naive position. As things stand the difference between people with ad blockers and without isn't how much they hate advertising, it's how tech savvy they are. If IE came with ad blocking by default then (assuming it worked) it's not like its users would be rushing to turn it off, and it's not like those users suddenly went from loving ads to hating them.

I personally don't use an ad blocker on my machine. I do use flash block. Most of the sites I visit just don't have that many ads. If a site has so many ads that it becomes annoying, I don't go back to that site so much.

Unfortunately though with flash block a lot of sites will think you have flash installed and will dish up flash instead of html 5... I believe youtube does this. I disabled flash completely a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised- very few site are flash only. My number one beef with flash is instability and slowness and this is gone now.

I don't think their position is naive. People who block ads might be more savvy than the general population, but those people have also gone out of their way specifically to block ads. It's true that they do hate advertising, or at least the practical effects of it (slow page loading, possible malware, etc).

I don't think their position is naive. People who block ads might be more savvy than the general population, but those people have also gone out of their way specifically to block ads.

You entirely missed the point, which is that the people who haven't blocked ads don't necessarily want to view ads either but most don't even know blocking exists. If 100% of browsers came with ad blocking on by default then I doubt more than a couple of percent of users would turn it off.

I use Chrome and the Personal Blocklist (by Google) extension to block them from appearing in Google search results. I will *not* run an installer that does who knows what to my pc, so they get the blacklist.
The fact that they are changing their practices is too little too late, the trust was murdered forever ago.

Exactly. I have NoScript installed. That isn't an ad blocker as such, but it does end up blocking a lot of ads. But that's the advertisers' fault, not mine. There's no reason ads should need scripting or plugins. If you can't make your ads work within reasonable security constraints, that's your problem.

While their belief that people who don't like them won't click on them is true, advertisers are kind of like proselytizing religions. Their deepest motivation isn't to convert the mostly converted, but to reach those who are the hardest to convert. Marketers are convinced of the idea that selling to the man who doesn't want to be sold to is only a matter of reaching him with the right campaign.

Actually, if you're a power user on stack overflow, or any sites on the stack exchange network, then they cut down the number of ads they show you. When I go to their sites, I never see any ads. I just see links to other sites on the network or "careers" ads. I don't see any links to any third party sites.

They would just post a thread to ask that. People are offering up solutions. Desperate to have a solution even. As a user, I don't want the content to go away, but on the other hand, I am not tolerating asshole ads either. If someone can take the asshole part out and find a happy medium then I wouldn't complain about it.